For three leaders in the post-acute care industry who participated in a recent webinar, the answer to how in-home care organizations should approach the current regulatory and payment environment boils down to perspective.
Hosted by Forcura, a healthcare technology company that offers workflow management solutions, and post-acute care consulting firm Maxwell Healthcare Associates, the March 1 webinar entitled “Back to the Basics: Winning Your Market in 2023 and Beyond” featured representatives from the two organizations plus a hospice agency discussing strategies for success in an uncertain landscape.
Their advice: take action; make this time an opportunity to work smarter and focus on the things that really matter.
“I think if you take a step back, there are a lot of big changes happening, but it's also a huge opportunity if you think about how the visibility on this sector is probably greater than it ever has been before,” said Annie Erstling, COO of Forcura. “Our clients are experiencing this in the way that they're working across the aisle with payer partners and with their physician partners … and I think we’ve just got to be smart about the way that we're running our business, especially in light of the regulatory and macro-economic environments. I think it's all about how you do more with less.”
Jennifer Maxwell, CEO and co-founder of Maxwell Healthcare Associates, agreed and added that organizations’ efforts need to center on bridging gaps in the care continuum.
“I think it's really just trying to streamline processes so that there's not so many conjunctive pieces. The ultimate goal … is one continuous assessment, so that a patient is not having different assessments, different data, and then care gets fragmented. The goal to have is continuous care … and communication across all levels of care as well.”
To that end, the panelists agreed it all begins with intake. The need to streamline and automate data for referral processing is increasing as organizations deal with staff shortages and higher acuities that require quick decisions regarding patient acceptance and placement. Following that, they must be able to coordinate care as efficiently as possible to get the most effective outcomes and receive optimal compensation while adhering to regulatory guidelines.
Leaders of hospice organizations including Susan Freeman, COO of St. Croix Hospice, are familiar with increasing regulatory compliance pressures as they adjust to recent CMS updates that require more scrutiny of their care plans.1 While providing clinical and back-office staff with enabling technology will help to address such developments, Freeman agrees with Maxwell’s assessment that training employees to use the technology proficiently should also be a priority to avoid roadblocks that frustrate both the caregiver and the patient.
Freeman said the puzzle pieces of patient care and staff satisfaction are now more interlocked with an organization’s processes than ever.
“We look at what we can do to be more effective, more efficient, more productive, but now we're also looking at these in terms of what can we do to improve the patient experience or employee satisfaction, because those are the new drivers; you've got to improve your patient care and … the staff is so critical in being able to provide the care. So what we do is when we look at the opportunity to improve a process, we try to pull in the end user to get their actual buy-in.”
Technology can be transformational in achieving these goals, but as the panelists explained, its benefits are fully realized only when it is the right fit for staff’s needs and there is consistent user adoption.
“[You have to] really dissect what the current operational state of the organization is, what the goal of the technology is … what it is going to give an organization all the way down to the end-user,” Maxwell said. “We talk about the people, the process, and the technology, but it truly comes down to adoption. [The employees] need to know the ‘why,’ they need to want it, … see the value in it, and [have their voices] heard.”
Freeman believes transparency is key to instilling confidence in a technology solution because when employees don’t understand the value in it, they may create workarounds for the technology and disparities in the way it is used.
“We don't want the staff to ever be fearful, so we want to have open communications about what we're trying to do, why we're trying to do it, and how it will benefit the patients and themselves,” she said.
On the technology side, Erstling said vendors bear the responsibility of fully understanding organizations’ business objectives, what success looks like for them, and how to measure that success to validate ROI. She added that a technology company should establish a true partnership with its client by continuing to monitor its performance and future needs.
“We know that things change, so you can't just implement a new technology with ‘set it and forget it.’ Any great technology partner should be iterating and evolving [along with its clients].”
While the panelists acknowledged tough headwinds facing the in-home care industry in the foreseeable future, they agreed that where there are things an organization can control, now is the time to address them aggressively.
“Optimize, optimize, optimize,” Maxwell said. “[Do it] throughout all the topics that we've talked about today – focusing on internal processes, reducing redundancies, implementing technology – I would just say optimization [is essential].”
Added Erstling: “My personal mantra for the year is ‘cut the clutter and focus on what matters.’ I think that applies here really well … focus on what's going to allow you to sustain operations that [provide] the best possible care for the patients you serve.”
Don’t miss the full webinar for more boots-on-the-ground perspectives and advice on how to win your market in 2023.
